


Night Fevers

by WillowScarlett



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Biting, Blood Drinking, Consent, Cuddling & Snuggling, Everybody Lives, Hurt/Comfort, Larry and Barry are Ganglions Not Lymphomas, M/M, My First AO3 Post, Sweet and Loving Mild Gore, War Boys Showing Affection, War Boys Treat Bleeding as Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4284669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WillowScarlett/pseuds/WillowScarlett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nux calls Larry and Barry his mates, but Slit knows enemies when he sees them... and he knows how to deal with anyone who hurts Nux.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Fevers

**Author's Note:**

> I dropped in some non-movie Aussie slang, if in doubt just assume any unfamiliar words are insults.

Slit got back to the bunks well after dark. He was exhausted after hours of target practice, legs weary and arms aching, sweat dampening the clay on his back and ribs. But he was also revved up from a fight with one of the other lancers. The other War Boy had tried to settle score with a claw hammer, but Slit had laid him down with savage blows of his fists. Now he had fresh blood on his knuckles and an open gash on his chest that would probably need staples in the morning. He was rusted up about that - he should have seen the blow coming, should have stopped it, should have ended the other Boy without getting a scratch himself. Now he was flooded with anger, majorly pissed, looking for a fight and not for sleep.  
The sleeping tunnel was poorly-lit so Slit carried his own torch. He’d always hated the dark, living for the searing brightness and suffocating heat of the desert, fueling himself on sand and anger and adrenaline.  
When he was younger the other Pups had whispered behind his back and jeered at him for being scared of the dark, but that had stopped when Slit had grown chrome and strong enough to wop them all around the ears. He’d kept on growing until he was so fearsome that now the whispers said he’d been touched by Immortan Himself. They said that The Man Who Grabbed The Sun had gifted some to Slit so he would always walk in the light.  
But tonight, Slit was more obnoxious than usual. He stomped his heavy boots on the rough floor and made the metal on his pants jangle with every movement, and swung his flaming torch around, daring someone to wake up and protest at the bright light.  
But if any of the other War Boys were awake, they knew better than to pick a fight with Slit.  
He was too revved up. He wanted to crack the entire world’s skull. He wanted to get out on the road with a pike in his hand and his partner Nux working the engine to turbo-charged fury, the two of them roaring over the sand and dirt, whooping in joyous rage. The whole ugly fucked-up world only made sense when he saw it from Nux’s car. He wanted to rip and tear and shred, to scream until his lungs ached and to punch until his hands were a useless bloody pulp. He wanted to work himself so hard that he was exhausted, body and mind, and could just fall asleep beside Nux and not think about anything else.  
Because Slit didn’t know how to live in this world anymore. He could see his partner growing sicker every day, his half-life getting shorter and their days together flying away like dirt under speeding wheels.  
Nux had always fought his own fights. He’d been a runt of a Pup and wouldn’t have made it to be a fully-fledged War Boy if he hadn’t been a cunning and ruthless fighter. He was fearless and sharp and he never backed down. He was the youngest Boy to make it from black thumb to driver, and he’d chosen Slit as his lancer. It was a compliment Slit could never repay. All he could do was try to deserve it. With every hour of grueling training he pushed himself harder, worked endlessly to become the deadliest he could possibly be. So when Nux was lifted to Valhalla, Slit would be right there beside him. Slit had to earn his place at Nux’s side, riding together, forever, just as it should be.  
There was no one to fight in the dark room with its hushed susurration of War Boy breathing. Slit had to settle for viciously kicking the bunk of the sleeping Seep, a driver who’d talked schlang about Nux. Seep grunted and rolled over but didn’t wake. Slit debated slamming a boot in his face, but decided against it. He was too chrome to attack a sleeping opponent.  
He stomped his way over to his bunk, then froze in his tracks. All his seething anger fizzled away as he looked down at Nux, curled on his side in Slit’s bunk. Two blankets were draped over his lean shoulders, but the blankets were such scrappy, well-worn rags that they barely covered his body. One pale foot stuck out but, as Slit watched, Nux tucked up into an even tighter ball and his foot disappeared under the blankets.  
Slit mounted his torch in a bracket by the bed and squatted down at Nux’s head. He wrapped one brawny arm around his driver’s shoulders and pressed their foreheads together. He stayed there for several long heartbeats, swallowing gulps of Nux’s sweet breath and letting it fill him like Aqua Cola, soothing into his body and easing his aches.  
When he pulled away, Nux’s eyes were open.  
“Slits?” The word was a broken croak like the rasp of a snake’s skin over sand.  
“I woke you.”  
Nux shook his head quickly, but his bright blue eyes were clouded with sleep. “Was waiting up for ya.”  
“Sure.” Slit grinned but tried to hide it by biting down on the ragged scar tissue that lined the sides of his mouth.  
“Were you shiny tonight?”  
“Yeah. Always.”  
Nux smiled sleepily, that perfect smile that made his chapped lips look plump and warm and delicious. He gazed up at Slit like the ugly hulk of War Boy was worth a damn in this life and mumbled, “You’re the best.”  
And then Nux was hooking his own arm around Slit’s neck and reeling him in for a kiss, hot breath and wet tongue questing into Slit’s mouth, tasting like hope and adoration with just a hint of his fried hedgehog dinner. Their lips were cracked and destroyed but their kiss was deep and fresh.  
When Slit had to pull back, he only went far enough to catch his breath. His forehead was still pressed against Nux’s and their arms were still around each other as Slit gulped down lungfuls of cold night air and warm Nux breath.  
After long moments gazing at each other across half an inch of flickering firelit space, Nux smiled lazily and lifted up the blankets invitingly. One blanket from his own bunk and the blanket from Slits, though they slept together so often that the idea of separate beds was laughable.  
Nux never wiggled over for Slit. He stayed on the outside of the bed and made Slit climb over him. When Slit went to bed first, Nux would make room by shoving him over until Slit’s back was against the cave wall. Nux always kept to the outside of the bed so he would be the first on his feet to fight and defend his partner, or to keep him safe and sheltered from the dark. He didn’t care that Slit was huge and muscular and fearsome, he’d protect him even while sleeping.  
It was just so _Nux_ that Slit couldn’t bite back a delighted grin as he clambered into bed. The other Boys wouldn’t believe that Slit could smile like that - his whole reputation was built on being angry and ferocious. But his driver made him feel that weird thing: happiness. Like returning victorious from a raid, driving the Fury Road with endless stars above and only the roar of other cars beside them. _That_ was joy like Slit got from Nux. Maybe it was a soft feeling, but Slit wouldn’t barter it for all the fresh food in the world.  
Just to compensate for Nux being so good to him, Slit stole most of the blankets for himself. But Nux pushed back against his body, pressing up close until the ridge of his spine was molded into Slit’s broad chest and the blankets fit over them both.  
Slit settled an arm around Nux’s waist and nuzzled into him, his hand lazily tracing the engine carved into Nux’s flesh. The fresh wound on Slit’s chest protested when it was smacked up against the other Boy’s body, but it was a pleasant burn.  
For a moment he thought it was his own muscles trembling, the ache and exertion taking their toll on his body. But then he realized Nux was shaking in his arms. Slit was torn, worry and grief warring with relief that he was close enough to know that his partner was in trouble and maybe be able to help.  
In the light from his torch he could see Nux’s eyes scrunched tightly closed, the lashes fluttering. His face looked like a skull - hollow cheeks, sunken dark eye sockets, the scars like millipedes carving the sharp line of cheekbones - gaunt and inhuman, exaggerated by the war paint. His cracked lips were quivering slightly with every breath.  
Slit couldn’t help tracing his fingertips over those ravaged lips, as warm and dry as rocks in full sunlight but as soft as sinking a hand into sand. Even though they were ruined by thirst and shine, Nux’s lips were still beautiful, plump and supple. Made for sneering and shouting and crowing in victory, or for kissing and smiling in goofy contentment. Nux’s lips should never be tight in pain or fear.  
“Night fevers?” Slit whispered.  
He was watching closely enough to see the spasm of shame and frustration pass over his driver’s face. Nux didn’t like being seen as weak - no War Boy did - but he relaxed again and shook his head slightly. “My mates are hurting me.”  
“Mates?” Slit thought again of Seep’s mocking words, and wished he _had_ put a boot in the Boy’s face.  
But Nux was shifting in his arms, craning his neck to draw attention to the lumps at the base of his throat. “Larry and Barry. They won’t stop chewing on my windpipe.”  
“Bastards.”  
Nux huffed a breath of laughter but didn’t say anything.  
Slit traced the line of Nux’s slender neck, from the hinge of his jaw over the smooth skin and strong tendons, feeling the life that throbbed there with every breath. At the join of Nux’s neck and shoulder, where his pulse should be strongest, the two blobs grew.  
Slit had been the first to notice them - he slept with his face pressed in Nux’s neck and paid more attention to his skin than Nux ever did. One night there had been a hard little ball of gristle under Nux’s skin. Slit had kissed it and waited for it to disappear, just another mystery on their bodies that they didn’t understand and had had to figure out themselves. But it didn’t disappear, it kept growing and even grew a buddy, swelling up like paint peeling from a car in the sun.  
By then the lumps had started hurting Nux. He admitted it one night after a supply run, on the way back to the Citadel. With his hands resting confidently on his death’s head steering wheel and his bright blue eyes focused on the road ahead, Nux was bubbling with fierce destructive joy, completely in his element and devastatingly beautiful. He told Slit that the lumps had started biting him and wanted to eat him all up, so he had to try harder to impress Immortan Joe and be lifted to the gates of Valhalla instead of dying a weak death in his sleep.  
It had been days later that Slit had finally come up with a response. He’d told Nux that the lumps weren’t his enemies, they were friends who wanted to get strong with him. Nux had smiled at that, and even given them names - Larry and Barry. Silly names for a silly idea.  
It had been Nux who’d asked for the tattoos. He’d come up to Slit with a handful of coal and a sharpened metal rod and told Slit that if Larry and Barry were friendly then they should be smiling. Slit hadn’t hesitated before carving the lumps with the soppiest happy faces he could manage.  
But he knew they weren’t Nux’s friends. They were traitor parts of him trying to steal what was left of his precious half-life. Slit would gladly die at Nux’s side in war and ride to Valhalla in flames. But he couldn’t bear to see his driver being slowly worn down and dragged toward a coward death.  
So he placed a kiss on Nux’s feverish skin below the lumps and said, “We should kick them out.”  
“What?”  
“Ya mates. Tell them to fuck off.”  
Nux placed his hand on Larry and Barry, his fingers brushing against Slit’s. “They think I taste good.”  
Slit snorted. That was just too _easy_. He nipped at Nux’s shoulder and said, “Ya do, Nuts.”  
He was rewarded with a little whining chuckle, sweet and low in Nux’s throat to show his imagination had wandered down the same dirty roads as Slit’s. The rest of their palaver could be platonic, but that? That was pure sex and if any of the other War Boys were listening, they’d know.  
Fuck it. Slit _wanted _them to know. Nux was the best damn driver in the Citadel, totally kamakrazee and fearless with blood lust. Nux was _Slit’s___ driver, and everyone better know it.  
Larry and Barry better know it, too. Slit was tired of sharing... _he_ was the only one who got to chew Nux’s tender neck at night. And he was sick of watching his Boy hurting just ‘cause some freeloading lumps had switched on to how good he tasted.  
“I’m running ‘em out,” Slit said, licking Nux’s skin just below the fleshy blobs. The taste of war clay and Nux was familiar and delicious like a burst of brightness against his tongue. “Ya taste too fucking good to share!”  
Nux twisted his head around to look at his lancer. In the glow from the torch, Nux’s eyes were a ghostly, startling blue. For a few moments he just looked steadily at Slit like he could hear all the desperate, possessive thoughts howling through Slit’s head. But then he lifted one side of his cracked mouth in a knowing smirk. “You’re throwing a sook, aren’t ya? Ya wanna pick a fight, so you’re picking on my mates. Find someone ya own size!”  
For all his jabbing words, Nux was still shivering uncontrollably. But his eyes blazed, fiercely challenging Slit to dare and be soft or mention Nux’s weakness. They both knew the tumors would end Nux’s precariously short half-life, and they both knew Nux was scared. But Nux was a battle-tough revhead who’d go down with honor, witnessed and fighting, and never admit that a couple useless lumps of flesh were destroying him. He’d keep up the guise of Larry and Barry as his friends until they were the death of him.  
Nux was tough. But Slit was his partner, and he got to worry about Nux even if the Boy never worried for himself. So he growled, “These munters looked at me funny. They gotta pay.”  
Nux grinned, teeth glinting bright. He looked like a funeral god, good enough to be carved into the side of a war rig. The skeletal sharpness complimented by the delicate lines of scarring and little flecks of blood on his war paint. Like the desert at night, moon-bright and pale with inky shadows and startling red rocks. Nux was sickly and broken and fucked-up, yet too beautiful to be human.  
Slit couldn’t bear it. He cupped a hand around Nux’s throat and physically dragged their faces together in a clash of rough lips and teeth and paint. He tightened his grasp around Nux’s throat until the Boy was wheezing and grunting, then pulled back with one last kiss. Nux’s pupils were huge, making his eyes a shadowy dark blue. His mouth hung open as he gasped raggedly for breath, asphyxiated and aroused. When Slit eased up his grip, Nux convulsively grabbed his hand and pushed it back against his throat.  
“Fuck,” Slit hissed. All his anger from before had shifted into need. Funny, how Nux always affected him in extremes... calming him down or revving him up, never anything in between.  
He loosened his grip but kept one arm around Nux’s neck, the other around his waist. He kissed the smooth skin below Larry and Barry and said, “Tell me I can kill ‘em.”  
Nux made a noise that sounded like a yes but could just be a hum of pleasure.  
“Tell me I can fucking kill ‘em!”  
“Yeah!”  
_That_ was unmistakable. Slit sealed his lips over one of the lumps - Larry? Barry? Who the fuck cared, they were both bastards - and bit down savagely. In the past he’d ripped ears off enemies in a shiny frenzy so he knew what to expect: the resistance of the flesh, the merciless pressure he had to use before it gave way with a gristly pop that juddered through his teeth and straight down his spine.  
His mouth flooded with blood, copper and bitter. His parched throat acted on instinct and he swallowed without thinking.  
That was the point where a person should be screaming in pain and thrashing to escape. Slit should be reaching for his knife - or at least a heavy rock - to end the suffering and send another soul to Valhalla.  
But Nux didn’t make a sound. His body quivered and his shoulders were tense but he stayed completely silent.  
Slit bit until his front teeth clacked against each other and his mouth filled with gore. He swallowed the blood, his tongue working around the squishy _thing_ in his mouth. When he pulled away there was blood everywhere, Nux’s shoulder a mess of glistening red and purple and black. Rivulets stained his white paint and spilled onto the bunk.  
It was sickening, raw meat in the place of smooth skin. Slit’s stomach turned. He was a War Boy who often reveled in grotesque injuries and caused far worse than what he’d just done, but that was while battle-drunk on the Fury Road and not in a bunk with the only person he’d ever loved. It looked like a shrapnel bomb had exploded over his sweet, pretty partner.  
But Nux twisted to look at the gaping wound, frowned, then pressed his lips to it. Blood spread over his chin and into the cracks of his lips, garishly bold against the clear white of his teeth-grille when he grinned up at Slit. “You hate ‘em both, or just Larry?”  
Slit let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Then _he_ was the one shaking, his fingers feeling weak and numb as he skidded them over his partner’s shoulder, struggling for a clean grip on the blood-soaked skin. He leaned forward so his chest was flat against Nux’s scarred back, then spat out his mouthful of clot.  
“Larry’s one ugly minger.” He spat again to clear his mouth. “No wonder the bastard’s been hiding his real face.”  
The lump looked like a fat slug, pale and slimy under its coating of blood. Slit could have added that Larry’d picked right, trying to disguise its ugliness inside Nux’s perfect body. But he never let that stuff out of his mouth, all the sweet, stomach-jumping weakness that he felt when his arms were around his partner. Nux had a solid core of pure badass and he never ran out of ways to surprise Slit with it. Slit wouldn’t ruin the moment with softness.  
Nux turned his bright eyes to the flesh-slug and solemnly said, “I witnessed you, Larry.” Then he pinned Slit with his gaze while a manic grin spread over his blood-caked mouth. “Well? Ya want me to keep Barry? Fang ‘em out too!”  
“Kamakrazee fucker!” Slit burst out. He jerked forward until his head battered against Nux’s, and huffed a metallic breath against his mouth. Then he latched onto his neck, teeth-first, trying not to shred too much of Nux’s skin as he tore out the invader.  
Barry came out more easily but Slit still felt completely drained as he spat that second clump onto the bunk. He licked and sucked at Nux’s neck, trying to stop the bleeding, thinking it was probably okay to treat him gentle just once since there was all the gore to make it kinda rough.  
There was a large swatch of clay missing from Nux’s shoulder so Slit could see the cave-dweller’s pallor of his skin, and the wounds were ragged and moist. But Slit settled in anyway, his chin on Nux’s shoulder and arms still clamped around him. Sleeping like that would mess with the healing, tender scabs forming between Nux’s neck and Slit’s chin and breaking when the two separated in the morning. But Slit needed the closeness to calm his revved-up warrior heart; loved that he could pretend he was taller than Nux when they were lying down. Besides, torn and bleeding scabs looked impressive and that was worth the pain.  
Nux threaded his fingers through Slit’s on his belly and hummed contentedly. He wasn’t shivering anymore.  
He cradled the sticky corpses of Larry and Barry in his spare hand. “Ya rode me hard, cobbers,” he said seriously. “Died strong. We witnessed.”  
Slit brushed a dry kiss onto his neck, then countered the tenderness with a joke. “Ya love ‘em so much, wanna keep ‘em under ya pillow?”  
“Nah.” Nux’s solemn expression dissolved into a wicked grin. His eyes flashed in the torchlight as he flexed his blood-wet fingers and squeezed his dead traitor-mates. “Gonna mount ‘em on the hood of my wagon, give ‘em a chance to ride out in glory.”  
Slit barked a laugh, not caring if it woke the other Boys. He smiled so widely it ached in his ravaged, stapled-together cheeks.  
“It’s how they’d wanna go,” Nux said with a proud nod.  
Slit couldn’t care less what Larry and Barry wanted, as long as they didn’t get to hurt Nux anymore.  
After Slit drove to Valhalla he could live forever at Nux’s side. Until then, he could just fight every damn thing that tried to hurt Nux.  
With that cheery thought, he snuggled his driver close and fell asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm willowscarlett on Tumblr, always open to messages/comments/Mad Max chat!


End file.
